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If certain writers enjoy an imperial era, during which they achieve the pinnacle repeatedly, then U.S. writer John Irving’s lasted through a sequence of several substantial, satisfying works, from his 1978 success Garp to the 1989 release His Owen Meany Book. Such were expansive, witty, big-hearted novels, connecting characters he calls “outliers” to societal topics from gender equality to termination.

After A Prayer for Owen Meany, it’s been declining outcomes, except in word count. His last book, 2022’s His Last Chairlift Novel, was nine hundred pages of subjects Irving had delved into more skillfully in earlier books (selective mutism, dwarfism, trans issues), with a 200-page film script in the center to pad it out – as if padding were needed.

So we look at a recent Irving with caution but still a tiny glimmer of optimism, which burns brighter when we find out that Queen Esther – a only 432 pages – “revisits the universe of His Cider House Rules”. That mid-eighties novel is part of Irving’s finest novels, set mostly in an children's home in St Cloud’s, Maine, operated by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer.

The book is a letdown from a writer who once gave such joy

In The Cider House Rules, Irving discussed abortion and acceptance with colour, humor and an all-encompassing empathy. And it was a significant book because it moved past the topics that were turning into tiresome habits in his novels: grappling, bears, Vienna, the oldest profession.

The novel opens in the made-up community of New Hampshire's Penacook in the beginning of the 1900s, where Mr. and Mrs. Winslow take in young orphan the protagonist from St Cloud's home. We are a few years prior to the action of Cider House, yet Wilbur Larch is still recognisable: even then dependent on ether, respected by his nurses, starting every talk with “At St Cloud's...” But his role in Queen Esther is limited to these initial sections.

The couple worry about bringing up Esther properly: she’s from a Jewish background, and “how might they help a young Jewish girl find herself?” To answer that, we move forward to Esther’s adulthood in the 1920s. She will be a member of the Jewish exodus to the region, where she will become part of Haganah, the pro-Zionist militant organisation whose “mission was to protect Jewish settlements from hostile actions” and which would later establish the basis of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Such are massive subjects to take on, but having introduced them, Irving avoids them. Because if it’s regrettable that Queen Esther is hardly about St Cloud’s and Dr Larch, it’s all the more upsetting that it’s also not really concerning the titular figure. For causes that must involve story mechanics, Esther becomes a surrogate mother for a different of the Winslows’ daughters, and delivers to a male child, James, in the early forties – and the bulk of this book is Jimmy’s tale.

And here is where Irving’s obsessions come roaring back, both typical and specific. Jimmy moves to – where else? – Vienna; there’s mention of dodging the Vietnam draft through self-harm (A Prayer for Owen Meany); a canine with a meaningful name (the animal, meet the canine from His Hotel Novel); as well as grappling, prostitutes, novelists and genitalia (Irving’s throughout).

Jimmy is a less interesting persona than Esther hinted to be, and the secondary players, such as students Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy’s teacher Annelies Eissler, are underdeveloped as well. There are a few amusing episodes – Jimmy deflowering; a brawl where a couple of thugs get battered with a crutch and a bicycle pump – but they’re here and gone.

Irving has not ever been a subtle writer, but that is not the problem. He has consistently restated his arguments, foreshadowed narrative turns and allowed them to accumulate in the reader’s thoughts before leading them to resolution in lengthy, jarring, funny sequences. For example, in Irving’s works, anatomical features tend to go missing: remember the oral part in The Garp Novel, the hand part in His Owen Book. Those absences reverberate through the story. In the book, a central character loses an limb – but we merely learn thirty pages the finish.

The protagonist comes back in the final part in the book, but only with a last-minute sense of ending the story. We do not learn the full story of her time in Palestine and Israel. The book is a disappointment from a author who in the past gave such joy. That’s the bad news. The upside is that The Cider House Rules – I reread it together with this work – still holds up wonderfully, after forty years. So read that in its place: it’s much longer as the new novel, but 12 times as enjoyable.